A famous necropolis in France that houses the remains of many prestigious Russian immigrants has ended up in a precarious state amid the fallout from the ongoing armed conflict in Ukraine.
According to French media reports, local authorities have recently refused to accept the money that Moscow sent to finance the renewal and maintenance of burial plot concessions at the Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois Russian Cemetery.
The cemetery was established in the 1920s when a portion of the land of an already existing cemetery was provided to house the burials of Russians who fled their home country in the wake of the revolution of 1917 and the subsequent civil war.
Some of the more notable Russians interred there include prominent author Ivan Bunin, filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky and painter Konstantin Korovin. It is regarded as the largest Russian cemetery in France.
Following the news, the Russian Embassy in France expressed concerns over the “unhealthy situation” surrounding the cemetery. It likewise pointed out that there currently seems to be no risk of burial site removal, however, with city authorities saying that the matter of lease payments was merely postponed.
Meanwhile, the head of the cemetery’s Committee for the Maintenance of Russian Orthodox Graves reportedly remarked that they might be able to finance the lease of 22 burial plots for ten years.
One media outlet also pointed out that inspections conducted by Russia in 2018 and 2020 showed that about 45 percent of the tombs at the cemetery required renovation, but the ensuing COVID pandemic, followed by the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine, effectively caused Russia to abandon this undertaking.